Whoever Fears the Sea, Justin Fox [i love reading .TXT] 📗

home — but the unsteady easterly they were experiencing didn’t seem to fit.

‘This isn’t still the Kusi, is it?’

‘No,’ said Husni, ‘we would be using a smaller sail if it was Kusi.’

‘And it’s not the Kaskazi either?’

‘No, not yet, next month. This we call Matlai, the in-between wind of springtime, mostly from the southeast. It blows in October and early November. The Matlai is lighter, not so reliable.’

As the day wore on, the crew became chattier. Paul asked them to teach him Swahili sailing terms and jotted them down. Shekh came to look over his shoulder and corrected him as he wrote. ‘Changa — sail, mangoti — mast, foromani — yardarm, kana — tiller, omo — bows.’ To Paul’s ear, sitting on an open deck with a fair following wind and a lateen tugging above his head, the names were pleasingly lyrical, the sound of the word identical to its task, as though object and name had been born of the same monsoonal breath. Swahili was a language that caught the romance of the tropics in its every utterance. Paul tried the words on his tongue, relishing the way they rode his lips. Shekh giggled and shook his head at the terrible pronunciation.

Swaleh took over the helm from Omar. The young apprentice helmsman sat on the stern apron, steering with his foot and hardly ever looking ahead. Husni pulled out two fishing rods from under the thwarts and cast his Rapala lures. Anticipating the catch, baby-faced Kijoka returned to sharpening his pair of knives: scrape, scrape, scrape. Paul recalled his earlier throat-slitting fears and chuckled guiltily at himself.

‘We fish for sharks, tuna, kingfish,’ said Husni. ‘The best places are off Somalia. Lots of trouble there. Boats from Kenya still go, but you must be careful. No one sails as far as Mogadishu any more. Just the southern part.’

‘I was hoping to go up there,’ said Paul. ‘There are some important Swahili settlements and ruins.’

‘That is not a good plan,’ said Husni as he reeled in one of the Rapalas, then cast again.

Paul decided to let it drop, but the idea of sailing to Somalia still lurked at the back of his mind.

Husni chatted to Paul about fishing and the strange methods employed by his forefathers. For instance, some of them would use sucking fish, like remoras, on a line with a ring around their tails. The fish were trained to hunt green turtles. When they found one, they attached themselves to its throat and all you needed to do was pull in the line.

When a human-looking dugong was caught, an elder in the village would cleanse the fishermen. Crews had to swear on the Koran that no one had indulged in sex with the creature. Only after the ceremony could it be eaten.

One of Husni’s lines began to sing and, after a short skirmish, a barracuda was brought alongside. Swaleh grabbed a gaff, impaled the flailing fish and dragged it aboard where it thudded about among the ribs, splattering blood. Kijoka came aft and bludgeoned it to death with a belaying pin. Then the carcass was slid under the stern apron along with the boathook and gaff. Soon after, Husni hooked a second barracuda. Lunch was sorted.

Swaleh set about preparing a makeshift stove just abaft the mast. A wheel rim was lodged between the ribs, lined with sacking and filled with sand. Swaleh used his knife to split firewood into kindling, then doused the pyramid of sticks with paraffin and set a match to it. A pot of water was placed precariously on the flames, forcing the helmsman to sail more conservatively so as not to upend the meal. Meanwhile Kijoka descaled, gutted and chopped the barracudas into manageable chunks. The spines snapped with the same sound as the kindling. Pieces of fish were tossed into the pot, which slopped boiling water every time they crested a big swell. There were no condiments, accompanying vegetables or utensils.

When lunch was ready, the men picked pieces of meat straight from the pot. They’d already been at sea eight hours and Paul was hungry. But he felt queasy and couldn’t face the soft, insipid flesh, so Kijoka butchered a papaya for him, deftly cleaving and gutting it with a long blade. Paul dunked the fruit over the side to rinse off the fish blood and ate. The sailors chewed with open mouths, sucking loudly on the meat and smacking their lips. Kijoka clearly enjoyed watching how well his meal went down.

‘When we are not fishing, I’m a windsurfing instructor in Malindi,’ said the lad.

‘I’d love to learn,’ said Paul.

‘When you come again, I teach you. It’s easy-easy.’

Kijoka was a lively teenager who bounded about the deck, keen to help and eager to gain experience. Paul had been just like him when he was learning to sail as a kid on the Vaal Dam, first in Optimist dinghies, then Sprogs and finally L26 keelboats.

The fire was doused with a bucket of water and they could sheet in again. ‘Chia damani … pull in the sail!’ cried Husni. Kijoka and Shekh sprang to the sheet and hauled it in, taking a turn on a belaying pin slotted into the gunnel. Fayswal healed over and the bow wave began to boil. Paul helped them shift the ballast, in the form of sacks of sand, to the starboard side. The short luff at the foot of the sail quivered as the dhow crested each swell. They were tearing along.

The colour of the sea turned from aquamarine to murky green and Husni said it was from the silt of the Tana River, disgorging into the ocean. For mariners sailing far offshore, such signs helped them fix their positions. Omar spotted three dhows on the horizon, sailing evenly spaced, line astern. The vessels were hull down, flying towards the mushroom-shaped rocks of Ziwayu islet. As Fayswal approached the